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A Guide To Deadheading: How To Remove Fading Flowers From Your Plants

03 August 2023

Let’s be honest, “deadheading” does sound a little scary, but this simple task is an easy way to keep your garden blooming time and time again.

Removing fading blooms from your plants can also help to direct the plant’s energy into creating flowers, making them healthier and better looking. Besides this, deadheading also helps to keep a clean and tidy garden, which can in turn reduce pest damage on your plants.

Some plants thrive when deadheaded regularly, and others can be left for you to enjoy the fruits or seeds.

What is deadheading?
Deadheading is the process of removing fading flowers from your plants to encourage more blooms.

Plants produce flowers to encourage pollinators such as bees to transfer pollen between plants. This helps the plant to produce healthy seeds for its next generation. Once a flower has bloomed, the plant will set about making seeds. If you remove the flower before the plant can make these seeds, it will try again by producing more blooms.

Deadheading helps to keep plants looking fresh and beautiful in your garden. There are several other benefits of deadheading both for your plants and for your garden.

What are the benefits of deadheading?
Encourages new and strong growth
Deadheading is a form of light pruning, helping to keep the plant strong and healthy. Producing seeds is an energy-intensive business for our plants. As deadheading helps to forestall the creation of seeds, it diverts the energy of the plant into creating new blooms and new growth to support those blooms.  

Deadheading during the flowering period can also help to reduce pests and diseases. Removing dying material from plants removes potential feeding sites for opportunistic pests such as woodlice that will graze on weaker plant material. This could help prevent them moving on to other, healthier parts of the plant. Additionally, removing spent blooms can help to increase airflow around the leaves and stems, helping to reduce the likelihood of fungal infections.

Keeps plants looking neat and tidy
Fading blooms can be quite unsightly. When flowers are drooping, or turning brown it gives our plants a tired appearance. By deadheading, we can get more flowers and keep our plants looking vibrant and healthy.

Limits the spread of petals
Old blooms often drop petals, scattering them over the foliage and plants below. This not only looks untidy, but can also create problems for other plants. Fallen petals may become a habitat for pests, encouraging them into your flower beds. Also, fallen petals can stick to the foliage of other plants reducing their ability to photosynthesise and potentially lead to infections that start on the dying plant material.

Pruning regularly or before strong winds or heavy rain is good practice for reducing the spread of petals.

Reduce seed formation
Removing old flowers from a plant will prevent the seeds from developing. This is particularly important if you have plants that freely self-seed in your garden. By removing the flowers as they go over, you will stop this from happening and retain some control over what grows where.

If you are happy for seeds to form, you can still deadhead your plants for part of the flowering season to encourage growth. Then, allow them to go to seed as their flowering season draws to a close. This will mean that you can collect the seeds from your plants or allow them to self-seed. Seeds are also a valuable source of food for many garden birds.

Helps the plant conserve energy
Producing seeds costs the plant lots of energy. If you remove the flowers before this process begins, you will divert the energy into further blooms. Once seeds begin to form, the plant will direct most of its energy into them. This often causes flowering to come to an end and the plant to lose some of its vigour. Whilst this is expected towards the end of the season, we can help to delay this by deadheading.

When is the best time to deadhead?
The best time to deadhead flowers is when they start to turn brown or drop petals. This is a sign that they are now turning their energy into producing seeds. By removing the flowers promptly, you will prevent the plant from using its energy to make seeds. This means that the plant will go on to produce more growth and more flowers, with the eventual aim of producing seeds. With many plants we can significantly lengthen the flowering season by continually deadheading.

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